The Beach

Some friends asked us to join them on a trip to the Oregon coast this weekend. At first I thought they were crazy but when I checked the weather realized it was actually warmer at the coast than in Portland!

The kids immediately stripped of socks and shoes to run around the sand. This progressed quickly to Vada rolling around the sand.

We played in the tidal pools. Vada did awesome but I fell in when the tide surrounded me.

At a second beach after refueling on ice cream the kids chased and ran around the sand dunes. Vada kept screaming “This is awesome!”

More birthday…

Vada chose a lot of treats that she wanted for her birthday. Our freezer is still full of cake from Toban and my birthdays so I had to space out the baking with Vada. We made cupcakes for Vada’s friend birthday party but Vada still wanted a pink princess layer cake as well. Happy birthday kiddo!

Just Vada

Puzzles

This girl is serious about her puzzles.

Happy Halloween

We failed to get indoor pictures in good lighting of our little Cinderella. She looked beautiful. The weather is kind of rainy here so Vada wondered why we don’t do Halloween in the summer. I’m sure there will be many more days of dress up so I’ll keep trying to get pictures.

Happy happy birthday!

Vada turned 5 today (assuming I get this to post before midnight on Tuesday)! She wanted to celebrate by going to a west coast buffet chain restaurant called Sweet Tomatoes. I’m pretty sure she chooses it based on the ice cream.

For her present we decided to take her to a giant Toys’R’Us store and let her pick something out. We don’t really shop much at retail stores so this could have turned out really bad on a school night after ice cream. But it didn’t! She had a blast running all over the store and looking at everything. After nearly an hour we started to get her to narrow down her options… Stuffed animal, princess costume, jewelry kit, Legos, a bouncy house or trampoline, and a kid size car (not happening). She actually asked for our help in choosing so we weeded out the bouncy house, trampoline, and car (whew).

In the end she chose the Repunzal dress and long wig. Honestly we could not have picked out something better for her.

Krabi

I have been traveling in Asia for work the past couple of weeks and was lucky enough to be able to enjoy my layover weekend at the beach in Thailand. Krabi is a short flight south of Bangkok. Saturday I did a boat tour of several of the islands to swim and snorkel. Sunday I tried rock climbing outside for the first time. Way harder than in a rock gym with color coded hand holds!

Jack-o-lantern

Vada’s preschool went to the pumpkin patch this week! She wanted to carve it into a jack-o-lantern so tonight we did just that!

More mud

Taking a break from cute Vada pictures for more muddy pictures of me! These are more pictures from the warrior dash I did several weekends ago. I cannot even believe that my face is possible of that look of disgust in the picture climbing into the mud pit!